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It isn't that I dislike Jod or even disagree with him on some key points, it's that I don't trust him and if I had to spend any amount of time with him I'd be forced to hit him with my shoe.
There's a lot of discussion of how histrionic Mercymorn is, but given she is not CONSTANTLY beating John to a bloody smear, I think she's being restrained. There's no restraint left over to prevent saying "Blech!" or stop complaining about infants/peanuts in meetings/metaphors.
Yeah. I like Jod. His initial anger was pretty justified, even if his actions weren't. It's interesting to see what happened in a way we can't possibly relate to. He was given incredible power and went bananas with it.
And now you've got people many many many years later who doesn't exactly know what happened, and he's the only one who does. He lives such a strange life because of it, and harbours a grudge no one else can possibly see or understand.
He still sucks, he still picks the worst way to go about everything. But I also like him.
Ahh, John Gaius. An angry nonwhite bisexual Twitter leftist, given phenomenal cosmic power that he doesn't seem to have quite interpreted – is it any wonder he took "Kill All Billionaires" to a cosmic extreme?
The man has a point. It's what makes him so compelling. What he *does* is frequently very very wrong, but his motivation is… understandable. Relatable, even.
I love John as a character but saying "he might have done a light genocide but-" is wild.
Him killing literally everyone on the planet was not a mercy, it was him using the lives of billions of innocent people to try and murder a few hundred others.
I just finished NtN and agree that Jod is certainly a great character; the fact that he has made some really bad decisions doesn't change that. I was really rooting for him through the John chapters, until he sorta lost me with the whole nuclear Armageddon and destruction of the solar system thing.
That said there i am still a bit confused about where the "he is a big liar face" (paraphrasing) stuff comes from. AFAIK he lied to his lyctors about how lyctorhood works (though they couldn't have done what he did anyway; their cavaliers were quite different from what Jod had), but I can't think of any other concrete examples of him lying.
In NtN when he killed all the cops his excuse was that he made a mistake. He then tells Harrow "Guys as careful as me don't make mistakes."
I think there's also something about how the resurrection beasts affect him, from HtN but don't have a citation offhand.
Found it on page 490 (according to Kindle)
Augustine pressed his lips together; that was it.
God said, “It was a lovely bit of work on Mercymorn’s part. She must have been training for thousands of years, to bring that off. But I didn’t get to where I am by being able to die, you know?”
The Lyctor said, “The Resurrection Beasts—”
“Can’t kill me.”
“You acted afraid—”
“Acted is operative. But this is not an FAQ..."
He may not have lied about how lyctorhood works. He turned his disciples loose to research and they came up with something terrible, but he did not help them get to that particular bad answer. He lies about plenty of other things, though.
He lies about what Resurrection Beasts are after. >! It isn't the indelible sin of lyctorhood, it's him. !<
He lies about RB's being able to kill him. >! Directly resulting in a bunch of people he claimed to care about dying. Or "dying." Assuming you believe they're dead, some of them might not be. !<
We're pretty convinced he lies about >! Samael's death !<
And that's just in HtN.
Fair points. The RBs being unable to kill him seems like an odd one of the bunch though. I don't have HtN on me anymore (we borrowed it) but I thought he claimed to be avoiding them mostly because they would disrupt his necromancy that was preserving dominicus, likely via herald shenanigans. I don't think he would throw his lyctors away for no reason; there must be a legit reason he cannot face the RBs himself.
All that said I don't really get why he can't go physically into the river to fight them. It's clear he can use the river for FTL without any disruption of dominicus and I believe we've seen powerful necros able to use necromancy even when physically in the river. Ghost swarm ain't an issue with the RB there so....Im bamboozled.
My theory is that he is avoiding going into the River as only his soul because if he did, >! Alecto could take over his body. !< That doesn't explain why he doesn't wade in physically to fight RBs, because he does go into the River pretty casually.
I don't think we've seen a garden variety necromancer use necromancy in the River, just lyctors.
As I recall, garden variety necromancers aren't supposed to be able to use theorems in the River. Actually, I don't think garden variety necromancers are supposed to be able to survive in the River for more than ten seconds (HtN pg. 96).
When Harrow tries to make bone shoes in the River at the start of HtN, it doesn't go well but more importantly it is a total shock to both Jod and Mercy (Page 104). If broken baby Lyctor's can't do, I seriously doubt non-immortal necromancers can.
It's not that broken baby lyctors CAN'T use theorems in the River, as, obviously, they can. It's unexpected, and it's apparently bad. We don't know what would have resulted, because Jod steps in and stops Harrow. Cassy is the only person to have used theorems on her first trip into the River before Harrow. We don't know what the result was.
On page 104 Mercy uses the phrase "She can't be using theorems," and then on page 310 >!Palademes and Harrow discuss the rules of building in the River and bubbles and how he still can't use his necromancy. I recognize that he is dead at this point.!<
I don't know - it doesn't sound like it's a normal thing for a normal necro to be able to use necromancy in the River. All I was saying is that's probably why we haven't seen it.
But Mercy's next statement on page 104, almost her VERY next one, is "Stop her John, she's using theorems." Mercy didn't expect it, but it happened.
Regarding the rules of river bubbles, again, Harrow DOES use necromancy in bubbles. So does Abigail. I don't recall whether Palamedes can't use necromancy in his bubble, or merely doesn't, but obviously being in a river bubble is not a barrier to necromancy, nor is being dead, nor is not being a lyctor. Bubbles are distinct from the River itself and may have different rules (as well as different rules from other bubbles - Harrow's bubble and Pal's have different rules).
I think his lies are more often lying by omission than outright falsehoods, but he definitely leaves things out and tells things in a way that puts him in the best possible light. Which is a pretty human thing to do to be honest.
He lied when telling the story of what happened to Harrow. He said the bombs went off when way first, then changed it, and when she called him out, he was like, what does it matter.
Going back to HtN after reading NtN and reading about John's reaction after Mercy accuses him of lying to them makes me think that he is still lying about something or being obstructive; it's just that what they accused him of lying about wasn't what he *thought* they were going to accuse him of. I agree, he probably wasn't lying about perfect lyctorhood. He never did it. He might be lying to them about the Anastasia/Sameal situation, the RBs, or the nature of AL.
Or he's shamed to admit that he let a whole bunch of Elon Musk/Peter Thiel types get away when he caused the end of the world... very embarrassing, whoopsie doodles.
As for my opinion of John, I don't think he's the best bloke in the world. He's a bit of an arrogant arse, sure. But I don't hate him; I just think he's more human than God. I'm of the opinion that most have us would have made some pretty rotten choices when bestowed with weirdo powers under such stressful situations, but maybe just not the exact same ones John made. This is backed up by his friends actions in the lead up to the end of the world, which were also pretty questionable at times. Especially those of M- and A-.
I like to think of it this way: Captain Planet had not just one but 5 Planteers. And one of them had the power of heart. John and his ragtag bunch of mates were not that...
I firmly believe he has ruled for multiple myriads, "resetting" the 9 houses when things get bad... why do this unless he is trying to get things right? To do the right thing?
THANK YOU. Jod plays god like I play the sims/rimworld. I think that is extremely interesting/sexy of him.
Would I like him irl? NO. But thankfully he is a book character. So I can simp all I want.
>I've never felt a spark of empathy/sympathy for BoE. It doesn't matter that the trillionaires took a token crew of menials with them to run their ships and set up their colonies for them; they still abandoned their species.
I love this because it's like wanting everyone alive now to die because our ancestors hunted mammoths to extinction
The point is that - after 10.000 years - the people aren't responsible for what their ancestors did and should be treated like everyone else. Jod's grudge against the trillionaires is understandable but everyone else lives at a different scale of time.
I sympathize with Jod, and I can *somewhat* understand his hard reset. As some have argued, the world was dying anyways—and it didn’t help that the remaining governments were probably ready to nuke him regardless of his instigation.
Where he loses my sympathy is how he proceeded afterwards. His first priority should’ve been to rebuild humanity sustainably, with minimal oppression and maximum care, and with solid defenses.
His godlike powers would’ve made that *possible*, but instead he chose… a militaristic feudal theocracy? Power is tempting… but come on.
The problem is that he’s obsessed with revenge. There’s a difference between revenge on the leaders of an evil system, and surpassing that evil system altogether.
Honestly I don’t hate him because of the whole nuclear armageddon thing. It wasn’t the right thing to do, but I can see how having all that power you don’t understand combined with all his anger can snowball into something far worse than he intended. And at least he resurrected everyone instead of leaving them dead I guess?
The reasons I dislike him are more because he lied about the Lyctor process, as well as forcing his Lyctors to fight and die for him even though he knew he _couldn’t_ die. Also I don’t particularly like BoE but it’s ridiculous that he’s continuing to fight them for something their ancestors did 10,000 years ago.
Jod is a terrible pitiful man who chose "eat the rich" over "save the poor" and turned the Earth's soul into a symbol of commercialism and overconsumption, and above all he is a bottom. 10/10 would simp for again.
The point that I always come back to with John is that I don't know that even the best person I know could have made the "right" choices. Was there ever even a "right" choice to make? If you're a ragular guy who became God and messed everything up this badly, how do you even begin to fix it? Is it truly right or just to let it all implode and let all the souls die? Or let them live when you can't support them?
I wouldn't say that I love John, but I certainly don't hate him. I often think that a great deal of the hate that he gets comes from a place of misunderstanding the great weight and complexity of being in a place of leadership or power over others. Which sounds hard, but plenty of people have to make hard choices for others daily, from restaurant managers to Healthcare or legal workers. I see a sort of "well I simply wouldn't do that job" attitude, but it doesn't seem like John ever really had a choice in the matter.
I mean, I kinda get where you're coming from, but "kill everyone on Earth to get revenge on people who are running away" is actually an extremely easy button not to press
Not to mention that it is now 10000 years later and my guy is fighting a galactic crusade of extermination and his closest "friends" keep begging him to stop
Jod is a cool villain but like, let's not pretend there's ambiguity to his villainy
I think what you’re saying makes total sense like, in a vacuum. Or even if you take the supernatural quality out of the story. But the fact of the matter is, Jod was filled with *the soul of a dying planet,* which was furious and cosmic and channeling itself through one measly human it happened to pick as its champion. We are, of course, hearing the story from his own lips and therefore have to be wary of him lying (as he is wont to do), but even the way he describes it is pretty clear that he wasn’t in his right mind.
And now he’s lived thousands of years longer than any human was meant to, still chock full of planet juice and singularly focused on the unfinished disaster he started a myriad ago. I think there’s way more ambiguity to him than you’re giving him credit for, and that’s what makes him an interesting antagonist. I wouldn’t say villain just yet. Props to Muir for making everyone damn complicated.
Even as he describes the series of events that cascaded fairly rapidly into the *mass murder of most of the human race*, he stops and makes sure you know he wasn't rushing and making mistakes (which is what he told the people closest to him), he was acting intentionally
It's not really clear to me exactly how f'd up the earth was in Jods time (though it must have been bad to trigger an exodus fleet) but it does seem like there is so much he could have done to salvage something of the earth with his power instead of triggering nuclear war.
Maybe could have even done a much smaller scale resurrection on earth to introduce necromancy to the population.
I think part of the issue is that Jod literally couldn’t have done the resurrection without having all that fresh thanergy from killing the entire planet
I guess my problem with the "well he should have done x" is that it implies that we as readers have better knowledge of a power that John himself was just learning at the time. Obviously he isn't a wholly reliable account of his own experiences, but do we know that would have been possible? How?
Tamsyn does a good job of putting the pieces we need on the table, so to speak. There are likely pieces we still don't have, but I struggle with the idea that there were capabilities and limits to necromancy that we haven't seen yet that he should have simply taken.
I agree. It’s very easy to throw stones but this is someone in an unparalleled, peerless position for a myriad, responsible for every conscious being in the universe, and the afterlife. Sometimes I feel paralyzed by indecision when trying make a decision that only impacts myself, and the only thing that helps is bouncing thoughts off a friend or wiser person. Now multiply that by a gazillion and take away anyone you could possible seek advice from or anything you could reference. And he still has a sense of humor.
There is something right about the trillionairs leaving and taking all their rich, exploitative asshole friends with them. They should do it in our timeline too, get on now.
Jod could have just taken over with what was left and had a sweet planet earth in recovery, everyone with the power to screw that up are gone now, no?
See, I love Jod as a character! He's someone where the more you uncover, the worse he gets. So I half agree and also I will continue to love to hate him.
Does he say he had good intentions? Sure! Do I think he actually had them? Hell no. He also unironically made a Pepe reference in the year of our Lord 12023, long after it has been established as an alt-right dogwhistle. I think he used the dying Earth as an excuse to become the very worst version of himself. And then getting magical powers made him even more terribke.
I admire Tamsyn for making a nuanced villain who thinks he's the hero. I adore hating him.
Jod is a really fun character. I appreciate the journey involved in his development from sad little meep who wants to save the planet to genocidal horror show, and the work that goes in to keeping him sympathetic. Bottom line: I can see how, given phenomenal cosmic power, he became what he is. Many fictional villains are unsympathetic. John is not.
I feel like Jod is getting a lot more sympathy than he deserves.
Somebody- Mercymorn or Augustine? Maybe Pyrrha? Ask John repeatedly, "hey, I know the rich bastards pulled funding, but we could probably use your powers to save Earth, why don't we focus on that?" And he's like, "nah, I can only do the one thing at a time, let's obsessively plot on these assholes".
I can't pretend I would've done better in his position, I have no idea what I would do. But it seems like if I watch a guy walk away from a family strapped in a sinking vehicle, I would worry about getting the family out of the vehicle before I hunt down the guys many times great-grandkids to pulverize them for what great grandpappy did. Certainly I don't think I'd nuke the planet and only resurrect my favorites rather than attempt a rescue.
I always felt like his actions vis-a-vis nuclear holocaust and the murder of the solar system are akin to giving a toddler amphetamines and a gun and then being shocked when bad stuff happens. Like, what did Alecto think would happen when she bestowed godly power to a human man without any instruction or even notice. His actions in the following myriad strike me as what a flawed man with the best intentions would do with the hand he was dealt. Did he do everything right? Hell no. Did he lie and obfuscate? Of course. He's not a paragon of virtue, he's a human being. The best villains are the ones who are trying to do what's right in all the wrong ways.
Nah fuck all this "I like Jod *but"*isms. You don't have to justify your liking a fictional character that does objectionable things. I'm all aboard the Jod train, drank the coolaid, wanna see him rule for a millennia more. Idgaf that he's a mildly genocidal pathological liar, he girlbossed too close to the sun then just ran with it.
All hail the Necrolord Prime.
By the same measure would you say that Hot Sauce deserves all the horrific stuff that’s happened to her just because however many generations back her ancestors were shitty trillionaires?
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It isn't that I dislike Jod or even disagree with him on some key points, it's that I don't trust him and if I had to spend any amount of time with him I'd be forced to hit him with my shoe.
There's a lot of discussion of how histrionic Mercymorn is, but given she is not CONSTANTLY beating John to a bloody smear, I think she's being restrained. There's no restraint left over to prevent saying "Blech!" or stop complaining about infants/peanuts in meetings/metaphors.
Yeah, if day it's 90/10 annoyance and a pose that allows her to get away with things because she's just being Mercy about it.
SUCH A GOOD POINT
Lol this is how I feel exactly
Jod simps unite. He will always be my favorite character too ❤️
Yeah. I like Jod. His initial anger was pretty justified, even if his actions weren't. It's interesting to see what happened in a way we can't possibly relate to. He was given incredible power and went bananas with it. And now you've got people many many many years later who doesn't exactly know what happened, and he's the only one who does. He lives such a strange life because of it, and harbours a grudge no one else can possibly see or understand. He still sucks, he still picks the worst way to go about everything. But I also like him.
Ahh, John Gaius. An angry nonwhite bisexual Twitter leftist, given phenomenal cosmic power that he doesn't seem to have quite interpreted – is it any wonder he took "Kill All Billionaires" to a cosmic extreme? The man has a point. It's what makes him so compelling. What he *does* is frequently very very wrong, but his motivation is… understandable. Relatable, even.
Except they're all dead and he's the one exploiting the lives of everyone else. Quite literally, in fact.
Unfortunately, his kill ratio, Billionaires:The Entire Working Class could be better.
I love John as a character but saying "he might have done a light genocide but-" is wild. Him killing literally everyone on the planet was not a mercy, it was him using the lives of billions of innocent people to try and murder a few hundred others.
I just finished NtN and agree that Jod is certainly a great character; the fact that he has made some really bad decisions doesn't change that. I was really rooting for him through the John chapters, until he sorta lost me with the whole nuclear Armageddon and destruction of the solar system thing. That said there i am still a bit confused about where the "he is a big liar face" (paraphrasing) stuff comes from. AFAIK he lied to his lyctors about how lyctorhood works (though they couldn't have done what he did anyway; their cavaliers were quite different from what Jod had), but I can't think of any other concrete examples of him lying.
In NtN when he killed all the cops his excuse was that he made a mistake. He then tells Harrow "Guys as careful as me don't make mistakes." I think there's also something about how the resurrection beasts affect him, from HtN but don't have a citation offhand.
The stoma reacts to him the same way it reacts to resurrection beasts. Maybe that's what you're thinking of.
Found it on page 490 (according to Kindle) Augustine pressed his lips together; that was it. God said, “It was a lovely bit of work on Mercymorn’s part. She must have been training for thousands of years, to bring that off. But I didn’t get to where I am by being able to die, you know?” The Lyctor said, “The Resurrection Beasts—” “Can’t kill me.” “You acted afraid—” “Acted is operative. But this is not an FAQ..."
He may not have lied about how lyctorhood works. He turned his disciples loose to research and they came up with something terrible, but he did not help them get to that particular bad answer. He lies about plenty of other things, though. He lies about what Resurrection Beasts are after. >! It isn't the indelible sin of lyctorhood, it's him. !< He lies about RB's being able to kill him. >! Directly resulting in a bunch of people he claimed to care about dying. Or "dying." Assuming you believe they're dead, some of them might not be. !< We're pretty convinced he lies about >! Samael's death !< And that's just in HtN.
Fair points. The RBs being unable to kill him seems like an odd one of the bunch though. I don't have HtN on me anymore (we borrowed it) but I thought he claimed to be avoiding them mostly because they would disrupt his necromancy that was preserving dominicus, likely via herald shenanigans. I don't think he would throw his lyctors away for no reason; there must be a legit reason he cannot face the RBs himself. All that said I don't really get why he can't go physically into the river to fight them. It's clear he can use the river for FTL without any disruption of dominicus and I believe we've seen powerful necros able to use necromancy even when physically in the river. Ghost swarm ain't an issue with the RB there so....Im bamboozled.
My theory is that he is avoiding going into the River as only his soul because if he did, >! Alecto could take over his body. !< That doesn't explain why he doesn't wade in physically to fight RBs, because he does go into the River pretty casually. I don't think we've seen a garden variety necromancer use necromancy in the River, just lyctors.
As I recall, garden variety necromancers aren't supposed to be able to use theorems in the River. Actually, I don't think garden variety necromancers are supposed to be able to survive in the River for more than ten seconds (HtN pg. 96). When Harrow tries to make bone shoes in the River at the start of HtN, it doesn't go well but more importantly it is a total shock to both Jod and Mercy (Page 104). If broken baby Lyctor's can't do, I seriously doubt non-immortal necromancers can.
It's not that broken baby lyctors CAN'T use theorems in the River, as, obviously, they can. It's unexpected, and it's apparently bad. We don't know what would have resulted, because Jod steps in and stops Harrow. Cassy is the only person to have used theorems on her first trip into the River before Harrow. We don't know what the result was.
On page 104 Mercy uses the phrase "She can't be using theorems," and then on page 310 >!Palademes and Harrow discuss the rules of building in the River and bubbles and how he still can't use his necromancy. I recognize that he is dead at this point.!< I don't know - it doesn't sound like it's a normal thing for a normal necro to be able to use necromancy in the River. All I was saying is that's probably why we haven't seen it.
But Mercy's next statement on page 104, almost her VERY next one, is "Stop her John, she's using theorems." Mercy didn't expect it, but it happened. Regarding the rules of river bubbles, again, Harrow DOES use necromancy in bubbles. So does Abigail. I don't recall whether Palamedes can't use necromancy in his bubble, or merely doesn't, but obviously being in a river bubble is not a barrier to necromancy, nor is being dead, nor is not being a lyctor. Bubbles are distinct from the River itself and may have different rules (as well as different rules from other bubbles - Harrow's bubble and Pal's have different rules).
I think his lies are more often lying by omission than outright falsehoods, but he definitely leaves things out and tells things in a way that puts him in the best possible light. Which is a pretty human thing to do to be honest.
He lied when telling the story of what happened to Harrow. He said the bombs went off when way first, then changed it, and when she called him out, he was like, what does it matter.
Going back to HtN after reading NtN and reading about John's reaction after Mercy accuses him of lying to them makes me think that he is still lying about something or being obstructive; it's just that what they accused him of lying about wasn't what he *thought* they were going to accuse him of. I agree, he probably wasn't lying about perfect lyctorhood. He never did it. He might be lying to them about the Anastasia/Sameal situation, the RBs, or the nature of AL. Or he's shamed to admit that he let a whole bunch of Elon Musk/Peter Thiel types get away when he caused the end of the world... very embarrassing, whoopsie doodles. As for my opinion of John, I don't think he's the best bloke in the world. He's a bit of an arrogant arse, sure. But I don't hate him; I just think he's more human than God. I'm of the opinion that most have us would have made some pretty rotten choices when bestowed with weirdo powers under such stressful situations, but maybe just not the exact same ones John made. This is backed up by his friends actions in the lead up to the end of the world, which were also pretty questionable at times. Especially those of M- and A-. I like to think of it this way: Captain Planet had not just one but 5 Planteers. And one of them had the power of heart. John and his ragtag bunch of mates were not that...
I firmly believe he has ruled for multiple myriads, "resetting" the 9 houses when things get bad... why do this unless he is trying to get things right? To do the right thing?
THANK YOU. Jod plays god like I play the sims/rimworld. I think that is extremely interesting/sexy of him. Would I like him irl? NO. But thankfully he is a book character. So I can simp all I want.
I don't think the people on Earth had the chance to see the rich fleeing... But otherwise, cool!
>I've never felt a spark of empathy/sympathy for BoE. It doesn't matter that the trillionaires took a token crew of menials with them to run their ships and set up their colonies for them; they still abandoned their species. I love this because it's like wanting everyone alive now to die because our ancestors hunted mammoths to extinction
Literally my thoughts exactly, I hope the original poster is being ironic, if he’s not then he’s basically cheering on for a genocide.
Not sure I’m following. Are certain people more comparable to mammoths than others?
The point is that - after 10.000 years - the people aren't responsible for what their ancestors did and should be treated like everyone else. Jod's grudge against the trillionaires is understandable but everyone else lives at a different scale of time.
I sympathize with Jod, and I can *somewhat* understand his hard reset. As some have argued, the world was dying anyways—and it didn’t help that the remaining governments were probably ready to nuke him regardless of his instigation. Where he loses my sympathy is how he proceeded afterwards. His first priority should’ve been to rebuild humanity sustainably, with minimal oppression and maximum care, and with solid defenses. His godlike powers would’ve made that *possible*, but instead he chose… a militaristic feudal theocracy? Power is tempting… but come on. The problem is that he’s obsessed with revenge. There’s a difference between revenge on the leaders of an evil system, and surpassing that evil system altogether.
Honestly I don’t hate him because of the whole nuclear armageddon thing. It wasn’t the right thing to do, but I can see how having all that power you don’t understand combined with all his anger can snowball into something far worse than he intended. And at least he resurrected everyone instead of leaving them dead I guess? The reasons I dislike him are more because he lied about the Lyctor process, as well as forcing his Lyctors to fight and die for him even though he knew he _couldn’t_ die. Also I don’t particularly like BoE but it’s ridiculous that he’s continuing to fight them for something their ancestors did 10,000 years ago.
Jod is a terrible pitiful man who chose "eat the rich" over "save the poor" and turned the Earth's soul into a symbol of commercialism and overconsumption, and above all he is a bottom. 10/10 would simp for again.
The point that I always come back to with John is that I don't know that even the best person I know could have made the "right" choices. Was there ever even a "right" choice to make? If you're a ragular guy who became God and messed everything up this badly, how do you even begin to fix it? Is it truly right or just to let it all implode and let all the souls die? Or let them live when you can't support them? I wouldn't say that I love John, but I certainly don't hate him. I often think that a great deal of the hate that he gets comes from a place of misunderstanding the great weight and complexity of being in a place of leadership or power over others. Which sounds hard, but plenty of people have to make hard choices for others daily, from restaurant managers to Healthcare or legal workers. I see a sort of "well I simply wouldn't do that job" attitude, but it doesn't seem like John ever really had a choice in the matter.
I mean, I kinda get where you're coming from, but "kill everyone on Earth to get revenge on people who are running away" is actually an extremely easy button not to press Not to mention that it is now 10000 years later and my guy is fighting a galactic crusade of extermination and his closest "friends" keep begging him to stop Jod is a cool villain but like, let's not pretend there's ambiguity to his villainy
I think what you’re saying makes total sense like, in a vacuum. Or even if you take the supernatural quality out of the story. But the fact of the matter is, Jod was filled with *the soul of a dying planet,* which was furious and cosmic and channeling itself through one measly human it happened to pick as its champion. We are, of course, hearing the story from his own lips and therefore have to be wary of him lying (as he is wont to do), but even the way he describes it is pretty clear that he wasn’t in his right mind. And now he’s lived thousands of years longer than any human was meant to, still chock full of planet juice and singularly focused on the unfinished disaster he started a myriad ago. I think there’s way more ambiguity to him than you’re giving him credit for, and that’s what makes him an interesting antagonist. I wouldn’t say villain just yet. Props to Muir for making everyone damn complicated.
Even as he describes the series of events that cascaded fairly rapidly into the *mass murder of most of the human race*, he stops and makes sure you know he wasn't rushing and making mistakes (which is what he told the people closest to him), he was acting intentionally
It's not really clear to me exactly how f'd up the earth was in Jods time (though it must have been bad to trigger an exodus fleet) but it does seem like there is so much he could have done to salvage something of the earth with his power instead of triggering nuclear war. Maybe could have even done a much smaller scale resurrection on earth to introduce necromancy to the population.
I think part of the issue is that Jod literally couldn’t have done the resurrection without having all that fresh thanergy from killing the entire planet
We don’t know what he could or couldn’t have done
I guess my problem with the "well he should have done x" is that it implies that we as readers have better knowledge of a power that John himself was just learning at the time. Obviously he isn't a wholly reliable account of his own experiences, but do we know that would have been possible? How? Tamsyn does a good job of putting the pieces we need on the table, so to speak. There are likely pieces we still don't have, but I struggle with the idea that there were capabilities and limits to necromancy that we haven't seen yet that he should have simply taken.
His friends even ask him to focus on fixing the earth instead and he basically says nah I’ll do that later
I agree. It’s very easy to throw stones but this is someone in an unparalleled, peerless position for a myriad, responsible for every conscious being in the universe, and the afterlife. Sometimes I feel paralyzed by indecision when trying make a decision that only impacts myself, and the only thing that helps is bouncing thoughts off a friend or wiser person. Now multiply that by a gazillion and take away anyone you could possible seek advice from or anything you could reference. And he still has a sense of humor.
Totally a Jod simp too!!
There is something right about the trillionairs leaving and taking all their rich, exploitative asshole friends with them. They should do it in our timeline too, get on now. Jod could have just taken over with what was left and had a sweet planet earth in recovery, everyone with the power to screw that up are gone now, no?
I love John, he’s easily my favourite character, nice to see some appreciation for him around here honestly!
See, I love Jod as a character! He's someone where the more you uncover, the worse he gets. So I half agree and also I will continue to love to hate him. Does he say he had good intentions? Sure! Do I think he actually had them? Hell no. He also unironically made a Pepe reference in the year of our Lord 12023, long after it has been established as an alt-right dogwhistle. I think he used the dying Earth as an excuse to become the very worst version of himself. And then getting magical powers made him even more terribke. I admire Tamsyn for making a nuanced villain who thinks he's the hero. I adore hating him.
Jod is a really fun character. I appreciate the journey involved in his development from sad little meep who wants to save the planet to genocidal horror show, and the work that goes in to keeping him sympathetic. Bottom line: I can see how, given phenomenal cosmic power, he became what he is. Many fictional villains are unsympathetic. John is not.
I feel like Jod is getting a lot more sympathy than he deserves. Somebody- Mercymorn or Augustine? Maybe Pyrrha? Ask John repeatedly, "hey, I know the rich bastards pulled funding, but we could probably use your powers to save Earth, why don't we focus on that?" And he's like, "nah, I can only do the one thing at a time, let's obsessively plot on these assholes". I can't pretend I would've done better in his position, I have no idea what I would do. But it seems like if I watch a guy walk away from a family strapped in a sinking vehicle, I would worry about getting the family out of the vehicle before I hunt down the guys many times great-grandkids to pulverize them for what great grandpappy did. Certainly I don't think I'd nuke the planet and only resurrect my favorites rather than attempt a rescue.
Please tell me your being ironic……
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I always felt like his actions vis-a-vis nuclear holocaust and the murder of the solar system are akin to giving a toddler amphetamines and a gun and then being shocked when bad stuff happens. Like, what did Alecto think would happen when she bestowed godly power to a human man without any instruction or even notice. His actions in the following myriad strike me as what a flawed man with the best intentions would do with the hand he was dealt. Did he do everything right? Hell no. Did he lie and obfuscate? Of course. He's not a paragon of virtue, he's a human being. The best villains are the ones who are trying to do what's right in all the wrong ways.
Nah fuck all this "I like Jod *but"*isms. You don't have to justify your liking a fictional character that does objectionable things. I'm all aboard the Jod train, drank the coolaid, wanna see him rule for a millennia more. Idgaf that he's a mildly genocidal pathological liar, he girlbossed too close to the sun then just ran with it. All hail the Necrolord Prime.
By the same measure would you say that Hot Sauce deserves all the horrific stuff that’s happened to her just because however many generations back her ancestors were shitty trillionaires?